Hey… Look… Lights!

So, here’s what happened.

A few weeks ago, Gina plugged a treadmill into a bedroom wall outlet. The treadmill went through a series of emotions; it started as being confused and groggy after such a long slumber. When the fog of slumber cleared, it became angry at the prospect of having to do work for the first time at its advanced age. After some thoughtful reflection, the anger dissipated to acceptance, then to amusement, and then to extreme laughter as it realized it was about to become a high-powered clothes-hanger. So-is the usual emotional life cycle of most exercise equipment; its as predictable as not using said equipment. Unfortunately, the rapid progression through the emotional cycle was too much for the house to take. The house was taken aback… “Why is that clothes hanger laughing so uncontrollably?”. Its a 19 year old house. Its mental facilities are not what they used to be, nor is its reaction time. The house reacted in a knee-jerk fashion and killed the circuit. The treadmill shutdown (abruptly interrupting its hyena-like cackles), as did multiple outlets around the house.

Mistake #1 was asking me to look into the problem. As I often say, if it doesn’t have a keyboard, I’m really not that useful. Needless to say, the house doesn’t have a keyboard. But, I’m a grown adult. I’ve been able to accomplish some handyman-like things without seriously injuring myself or loved ones. I headed to the breaker box and looked for an off breaker. There were none. That pretty much exhausted my entire fountain of knowledge, but I continued to at least pretend I knew what I was doing.

We turned on every light in the house, and I flipped through all of the circuit breakers looking for one that didn’t do anything. I found it, killed the main, and took it out. I’m a genius.

I suppose at that point I could’ve just gone to Home Depot and bought a new one, but that’s not my style. I wanted to prove the problem first, so I ran a coat hanger across the terminals to see what would happen. Kidding! Ha! that would be irresponsible. What I really did was look for something that I could test the breaker with. I settled on the hard wired garage door opener in the garage. It looked low voltage. What’s the worse that can happen? (Yes, I can see volts).I took the button off the wall, took the wires off the button, then jammed the wires into each side of the circuit breaker. I flipped the switch and the garage door opened. I’m not an electrician, but that suggested to me that the breaker was fine. It feels like a mechanical device, not an electronic. If it was electronic, then maybe it only stopped working at high voltage or something, but I didn’t think that was the case. I replaced it anyway, and as expected, nothing happened.

Weeks passed. Amidst another endeavor, I learned that any outlet within 5 feet of a water source needs to be on a GFI circuit. Our kitchen has a GFI outlet… that’s tripped before, and I already checked it. That wasn’t the problem. Then it occurred to me that maybe there’s another one. I looked around all of the outlets in the known affected areas. Nothing. Then, a few nights ago, I remembered there was an outlet by the pool outside the bedroom. With a little excitement, I ran out to check that, and it wasn’t a GFI. Also, the nite-lite I had been using to test wouldn’t fit through the cover, so I didn’t even know if it was on or not. So much for the GFI idea.

Days passed

Our friend Chris came over tonight. He’s an A/C and Electrician type person. He came equipped. He checked all of the circuit breakers, and they were good. Then he checked the outlets, and saw they were bad. So far, I hadn’t missed anything obvious.

He began a manhunt around the house insisting that there was a GFI outlet somewhere that we were missing. I believed him, but I had no idea where it was. 2 seconds later he found one behind the BBQ. “Huh”, I thought. He hit the button and nothing happened. I was relieved because I wanted it to be more of a challenge after being out for 3 weeks. He took apart the outlet and confirmed that there wasn’t any juice.Sweet.

But, the manhunt continued with renewed vigor. He circled the house on the outside, then started working through the inside. When we got to the garage we went separate directions and I found it. It was right next to the breaker box behind some cabinets. As soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be. After all, it was a foot away from where I spent 90% of my time trying to solve the problem. Of course it would be right there.

I snuck my hand back there, hit the button, and everything started working.

I guess I should feel silly for not finding it on my own, but I don’t. Its just one of those things. If I knew that it had to be a GFI outlet somewhere, then I would’ve found it (at least, I think I would’ve), but I had no idea what was wrong. I only looked for it previously because I thought that might’ve been it, not because I knew it. Chris knew for sure, and was on a quest as if Indiana Jones looking for a Crystal Skull of some sort. It was inspirational and changed my life in a positive way. I may join a commune.

Now I know that:

• My house has more than one GFI circuits
• One of the circuits has 2 switches on it
• Any outlet within 5 feet of water must be on a GFI circuit (learned that last week in an unrelated story)
• GFI circuits go all around the house. I always though circuits were pretty localized.
• There’s an outlet behind our cabinets
• I have no business trying to solve house hold problems

Although it may be silly to people with IQs, at least I had fun and didn’t burn the house down.

The treadmill wasn’t available for comment.